Category: Oscar Profile

Born September 15, 1946 in New York, New York, Oliver Stone’s father was a non-practicing Jewish stockbroker and his mother a German-east European non-practicing Catholic war bride. Stone was raised Episcopalian in Manhattan and Stamford, Connecticut. He is now a Buddhist. Stone graduated New York University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree in 1971.…

Born November 5, 1913 in Somerset, England, Guy Green was a true renaissance man of the movies. His love for movies began at an early age, leading to his first job a projectionist aboard the ocean liner The Majestic, which brought him to America for the first time in 1929. He worked in London as…

Born March 7, 1908 to Marina Magnani and an unknown father in Rome, Italy, Anna Magnani was raised in poverty by her maternal grandparents with whom her mother left her. Although it was first said that Magnani’s father was Egyptian, she later claimed that he was from Calabria, Italy, although she never knew his name.…

Born February 8, 1953 in Newport, Arkansas to Nellie May (Wall) and Maurice Steenburgen, a freight-train conductor, Mary Steenburgen grew up tap-dancing her way through talent shows and school functions. Active in school drama classes as well, she appeared in numerous high school plays, enrolling in Hendrix College upon graduation. At the recommendation of her…

Born Mladen George Sekulovich on March 22, 1912 to a Serbian father and a Czech mother in Chicago, Illinois, the future Karl Malden spoke only Serbian until he entered kindergarten. The eldest of three children, his father worked in the steel mills and as a milkman in Gary, Indiana. His mother, who was twenty when…

Born April 15, 1888 to Jewish immigrants in Austin, Texas, Florence Rabe was the second of two children. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Mathematics in 1906, after which she taught school. She gave up her career in 1909 when she married her first husband and gave birth…

Born August 16, 1928 in Mount Kisco, New York to Irish-American parents, Ann Blyth’s parents split up when she was very young. She moved to Manhattan with her mother and sister, where they shared a walk-up apartment on East 31st Street and her mother took in ironing to make ends meet. A natural actress and…

Born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck in Indianapolis, Indiana on November 18, 1889, the entertainer later known professionally as Clifton Webb, moved with his mother Mabelle to New York, New York in 1892. On stage from 1902, he had become a professional ballroom dancer by the age of 19, often appearing with star dancer Bonnie Glass who…

Born July 6, 1962 in West Des Moines, Iowa, Peter Hedges was the third child of psychotherapist Carole Simpson and Episcopalian minister Robert Hedges. Father Hedges was, among other things, the chaplain of the Iowa National Guard for 21 years before relocating to Texas where he died in 2014 at the age of 88. Peter…

Born May 26, 1908 in Semley, Wilshire, England, Robert Morley was the son of a major in the British Army and a German-born mother. Educated in England, Germany, France and Italy, he was expected to go into diplomatic service, but chose acting instead. Morley made his West End debut in a 1929 production of Treasure…

Born March 16, 1916 in Juliet, Illinois, Mercedes McCambridge was the daughter of an Irish-American farmer and his wife, who was of Irish, English and German extraction. Educated in Catholic schools, she graduated from Mundelein University in Chicago before embarking on a career as an actress. Called by Orson Welles “the greatest living radio actress”,…

Born April 18, 1907 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) to Jewish parents, Miklos Rozsa’s father was a well-to-do industrialist and landowner, his mother was a pianist. He himself studied the violin from the age of five. In 1926 he began studying music composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1929, his violin concerto was performed there.…

Born December 12, 1925 in Surrey, England, Anne V. Coates grew up thinking she’d like to be a horse trainer. After graduating college, however, she served as a nurse in Sir Archibald McIndoe’s pioneering plastic surgery in East Grinstead, but found it a harrowing experience. From there she gravitated toward film, where she worked with…

Born March 30, 1897 in New York New York, Robert Riskin was one of five children born to Russian Jewish parents. As a teenager, he worked for a shirt-manufacturing firm which sent him to Florida at the age of 17 to run a film production company for them. He turned out one and two reel…

Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, California on July 20, 1938, the future Natalie Wood’s parents were Russian and Ukraine immigrants who barely spoke English. They changed the family name to Gurdin when they became U.S. citizens. At the age of four, while the family was living in Santa Rosa, the production company for…